Abstract

This dissertation compares the ethical thought of Aristotle and John Dewey; it focuses upon their respective accounts of the role of habit in human deliberation and action. The discussion primarily draws upon Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Dewey's Human Nature and Conduct. This dissertation has two major purposes. First, it illustrates that Dewey's account of ethics should be understood in a broadly Aristotelian vein. Second, it develops Aristotle's and Dewey's accounts of habitual action and discernment to show that theirs is a rewarding and compelling approach to ethical action. ;The dissertation begins with a discussion of Aristotle's and Dewey's account of experience $.$ The second chapter discusses the confluence of precarious and stable events in experience. Chapter 3 addresses habit, or $`\!\!{\acute\varepsilon}\xi\iota\varsigma,$ as a flexible and discerning human response to this precarious world. Habit is not simply a tendency to repeat actions. Instead, it includes a discrimination of relevant objects and a sense of the good within a situation. Chapter 4 discusses virtuous action as unifying these sensed goods in a harmoniously aesthetic $\rm$ action. The choices and actions of a virtuous individual involve sympathy, a discernment of the habits and values of others. This sympathy and sense of the good orient deliberation and $\rm\phi\rho\acute o\nu\eta\sigma\iota\varsigma,$ the subjects of chapter 5. $\rm\Phi\rho\acute o\nu\eta\sigma\iota\varsigma$ makes determinate this sense of the good. It fashions an appropriate act that is attuned to stable objects in the world. Because the world is also precarious, and deliberation determines ethically significant meanings, such deliberation is dramatic. The final chapter discusses the extension of ethical drama and meaning into the spheres of politics and pedagogy. Dewey describes all human experience as dramatic. The subjects of previous chapters, such as habit, precariousness and character ideals are implicated in the broader drama of human experience